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Posts by: Suzanne Sease

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

I’ve been photographing rodeos as a personal project, for the last six years. When I heard about a rodeo that was held inside of a maximum security prison, in which the inmates are the participants, I had to go. It seemed like the perfect capstone to this obsession of mine. After a lot of cold calls, and lengthy emails, I was finally granted access to photograph the event known as The Angola Prison Rodeo.

The Rodeo started in 1965, and has grown in size each year. The general public originally sat on apple crates, and the hood of their cars. Now, they sit comfortably inside a 10,000 seat covered arena. Due to increasing popularity, the inmates are now allowed to sell their artwork, furniture, and jewelry to the public. All of the funds go directly to the artist’s families on the outside.

Many people are torn on the thought of inmates with no prior experience riding bulls, and roping broncos, participating in this event. But, the truth of the matter is that this is completely voluntary. My goal was to depict them as ordinary citizens, in an extraordinary place. But when the sun sets on the Rodeo, the reality of it all sets back in place.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

Overview: WE CAME FROM FIRE:Portraits of Kurdistan’s Armed Struggle Against ISIS

The ancient Kurdish homeland is partitioned between modern-day Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. Oppression by state powers led Kurds to embrace armed struggle, yet failed to produce a lasting resolution. As the new war against ISIS dismantle nation-state borders, the once persecuted have risen to secure the power vacuum.

Artist Statement:

WE CAME FROM FIRE: Portraits of Kurdistan’s Armed Struggle Against ISIS is an independent and self-funded portrait photography series that transformed into a book project. It observes a controversial ideological guerrilla movement that has manifested itself into a sophisticated army in response to a crisis threatening the existence of an ethnic minority. After a ruthless and exhausting 6 years of war in Syria, only the most ideologically strong militias have flourished, absorbing various fragmented factions and uniting them under strict philosophies. The statistics flooding our daily news cycles rarely capture the mental convictions that can turn the tide of war, often surprising analysts with years of experience observing from afar. When one crosses into the North East of war-torn Syria, and is catapulted into a worldview crafted by the Kurdish guerrilla. Conversations often drift to conspiracy theories. It seems ISIS is just the beginning of a long list of culprits plotting to destroy the Kurdish identity. Oddly, the conspiracies begin to make sense. The militia’s secretive hierarchy vanishes due to its compartmentalization, and you find yourself among individuals who left their families with the intention of defending their culture and way of life. I have never felt comfortable calling myself a “war photographer.” In the past, I have photographed projects highlighting the plight of minority groups, but never in a war environment. When finally approaching a project on the Kurds, despite my lack of experience in a war zone, it became necessary to focus on their fighters—the armed defenders of a language and distinct cultural practices outlawed by every state the Kurds live. Portrait photography is an external medium that can remind us of our shared humanity, but it is also the best device for the nearly impossible goal of depicting the inner ideology which has fueled the Kurdish movement to rise to such a position of power.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

My personal projects are about turning everyday objects into something extraordinary. I’m a strong believer in “less is more” and have been religious about embedding that philosophy into my work. Simplifying the creative process and the photos themselves helps me get to the point and show the true nature of what I’m photographing. Food, paper, pills, and pencils are just a few of the common objects I choose to work with.

“Pencil Planet” contains about 200 pencils rigged into a circular shape that, to me, resembles a celestial body. “Waves of Pencils” attempts to transform the mass of pencils into a completely different entity, a swirling wave.

“Toilet Paper Story” is a body of work that portrays the familiar object in a new, funny, and engaging way. I started working with a few rolls of toilet paper and later added paper towels into the mix. The pastel backgrounds bring a warm and inviting tone to the photographs. I wanted the paper to look like it was coming out of the picture, engaging with the viewer even more. In the end, I’m just hoping to put a smile on their face.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

I consider myself privileged: I am white, male, educated, healthy, living in the Western world. I am, however, part of a ‘disenchanted generation’: born after WWII when globalization seemed like a great idea, a path towards one big happy family, only to be awakened to a hard reality of inequality and environmental abuse. Nowadays hardly a day goes by without some alarming news: ice melting, fresh water contamination, overpopulation, corporate greed, food poisoning, oil dependency, wealth inequality, the list goes on. It seems the world lost its mystery to become the playground of the very few at the expense of the rest. I believe the resulting sense of powerlessness has left us disenfranchised, resulting in a lack of social or environmental accountability.

But is this really the only way? Do we really need to follow this dead-end path?

I experience the context for the work as presenting the viewer with a world where humanity’s need for insatiable consumption has led it to the ultimate consumption, that of the consumption of the self. From this point we are brought to a world where humanity has disappeared and only nature remains, in its solemness. Nature has endured and now overcome the weight of humanity’s selfish behaviours and we are reunited with nature’s beauty and mystery.

Presented as a hypothetical archeological study on the nature of co-existence, it is my hope that we can still assume both global and individual responsibility, that we can still change our path forward.

Gallery Exhibit and opening in tonight, September 7th in San Francisco here

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

Ten years ago, I was a stressed-out art director working at an advertising agency. It was supposed to be my dream job, yet there I was, a miserable and workaholic wreck. It was at this moment in my life that I ended up adopting a street dog from Mexico named Maeby. Adopting her was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. If we’re being honest, I had found my soul mate.

Maeby’s sweet smile was better than anything else I could have turned to after a horrible day at the office. Suddenly working on ad campaigns felt meaningless when all I wanted to do was spend time with dogs. I bought a camera and started taking headshots of other rescue dogs to help them get adopted. My volunteer work evolved into a bustling pet photography business, and nine months later, I quit my job in advertising to become a full-time pet photographer. The rest, as they say, is history.

For nearly a decade now, I’ve devoted my life to capturing the faces and personalities of thousands of pets. While I love all God’s creatures, great and small, dogs will always be my favorite. Their loyalty, faithfulness, and unconditional love have filled a million tiny holes in my heart that I never knew existed. I’m now convinced there is no better therapy than a tail-wagging, butt-wiggling, smiling dog. Perhaps after reading this book, you might agree (unless of course, you already do!).

May the uncontainable happiness of these dogs touch your heart as much as they have touched mine.

Back story: This book is the result of a Tumblr + Instagram page I started back in 2014, to showcase my very large collection of smiling dog images that I’ve accumulated over the last near decade of photographing dogs. (http://dailydogsmile.tumblr.com/) I pitched it as a book back in 2014 and couldn’t get any “bites” but when a book editor approached me in 2016 to do a book together, she loved this idea. The moral of this story? Don’t give up your “dogged” determination to make your projects into a reality.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

SUMMARY: American Macondo is a photography based project with selective mixed-media components that looks at the US/Mexico relationship through a magical realism filter, considering the role of cultural memory and imagination in process of Americanization.

STATEMENT: Often when we think of migration, it is the physical distance traversed and the challenge of the journey that comes to mind. But for those who migrate, there is also an invisible, lingering landscape constructed of stories, shifting memories and imagined futures that unfold from generation to generation. Americanization is not a clearly defined event with a discernible beginning and ending; rather, it is an abstract process that defies time and man-made international boundaries.

In imagining Americanization as a process that exists on both physical and non-physical planes, an aesthetic that borrows from the literary genre of magical realism makes sense; it allows for a bridge between the intangible and tangible. There is a strange, fleeting pain that comes with cultural change. It is an ache so subtle and profound that it might very well require a bit of magic to be understood. After all, magic has inherent analgesic qualities. In leaving a land and a familial history, the immigrant splinters away from a predictable trajectory; it is the start of a curious process that continues in a wave-like manner with the immigrant’s children.

American Macondo is structured as a vaguely familiar journey narrative with a varied cast of characters in Mexico, the borderlands and in the US states bordering Mexico. The project will be told in three acts tentatively titled La Migra (considering the borderlands and migrant experience), Strange Sueños (considering cultural memory of Mexico) and American Dreams (considering the later stages of Americanization). The final body of work will also incorporate a written component — an accounting of shared stories, memories and dreams collected in the course of photographic capture.

As an immigrant to the United States myself, it is my deep conviction that in order to effectively comment on Americanization, both the internal and external aspects of the process must captured. As author Neil Gaiman tells us: “People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

My project, “Two-Wheeled World,” serves several purposes–the first being, simply, my passion for the bicycle. There’s what it can do for us as individuals and for the environment. We ride for fun, for fitness, to get from here to there. We ride to free ourselves from the daily grind or to lift our social conscience. Sometimes we ride for no reason at all. We love how riding creates a cool breeze on a still morning and how, after a long day at work, hopping on a bike makes us feel like the day has only begun. We ride to make familiar places new again. We see things in a different way, experience our environment more positively. Riding a bicycle in a metropolitan environment is one of the greatest feelings of freedom one can have. It’s amazing even to be able to feel this free in a modern city.

Then there’s the community that makes two wheels their form of transportation. The second and main purpose of this series is to put real faces to those who choose the bicycle over other forms of transportation. I want viewers to take the term cyclist out of the equation and replace it with “people who ride bikes.” My goal was to put people first so policymakers, motorists and everyone else recognize that these are your mothers, sisters, friends, and neighbors. They’re using this great tool—a bicycle—and deserve to be safe and respected like everyone else.

I’ve featured people who use their bicycle for work, school, travel, play, to race, or who just want to feel like a kid again. People who are activists, artists, messengers, and commuters. My intention is for the project to humanize cyclists and hopefully make dangerous drivers use more caution, as well as show how much better off society would be if it were a two-wheeled world.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

There’s a certain apprehensive joy in reaching out of a plane at 13,500 ft. with your right foot to find the “camera step”. About the size of an Apple track pad and riveted onto the fuselage of a jump plane, it can’t be seen without putting your head outside, which completely throws you off balance. So you have to do a bit of feeling about. The wind speed is about 100 mph, and then there is the prop blast (the wind generated by the propeller), which is considerable. I’ve noticed that thinking only about my immediate goals is very useful during this procedure.

Above the camera step, vertically separated by four feet, is a simple handle, about the size you might find on a kitchen cabinet. With my left hand holding the door frame, my right hand on the kitchen cabinet handle and my right foot on the step, I cling and crouch on one leg in preparation for the skydivers to set themselves in the exit. It can take 10 to 15 seconds for everyone to put their heads and hands in just the right place, for when the count comes it had better be so.

The dive leader, whilst grasping a bar inside the plane above the exit, stands on one leg on the lip of the exit and starts the count with a whole body movement in the direction everyone will go in another second. Out (1), In (2), Out (go). The rest of the skydivers are crammed into every spare inch available both inside and outside the plane. I’ve even seen skydivers standing on the plane’s wheel, although I haven’t figured out the acrobatics required to gain that particularly exposed roost.

Skydivers jump solo, sometimes in small groups and sometimes in the hundreds (no kidding). You can Google search “Skydiving head down world record” and will find 164 of the world’s most able skydivers wobbling and weaving their way through the sky in order to find a specific designated “slot” in the prescribed geometric formation. If a skydiver is in the wrong place, the record attempt is not recognized or validated.

The count is given, and usually I like to leave a fraction of a second before the group so I can get on my back and look up at the chaotic beauty of humans who refuse to accept that falling from great heights is bad or a finale.

I’m not saying that I don’t feel apprehension at some level, but the interesting thing is that once I commit and put my energy into the doing, the fear stops and the doing envelopes me.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

About six years ago, at a particularly isolated time in my life when I had less photo work and more domestic responsibilities as a single mother, I asked a farmer if I could photograph her. I’d been interested in all things food for many years, stemming from serious intestinal issues that started an exploration into how the food we eat and the way it’s raised and distributed impact our health. It’s not a new story that our industrialized food system is not serving us. The American system of mass production and the food policies that subsidize that system have created an unhealthy diet using unsustainable methods. Cheap, over-processed food poisons our bodies, exploits our animals and food workers, degrades our land, pollutes our water, and depletes our natural resources.

Such an inquiry into food, naturally, leads to the farmer.

So I started to visit Shannon’s farm to make pictures but also to hang out with her—to inhabit another woman’s life for a brief while and escape my own. The shooting I was doing was so unlike the work I was known for. It was just Shannon, me, and my camera. No styling, no lights. Just life as it was happening. I kept the work private for a very long time, because it was something I was doing just for myself.

I was curious about other women who took up the hard work of farming, and I wondered if there were many of them. Little did I know. One of the fastest growing demographics in the U.S. is women farmers, and they are more likely to pursue a kind of farming that really interests me: sustainable (organic, whether certified or not), small scale, independent.

I began to photograph more women. Each one has a rich story and a depth of knowledge about growing and raising food and is pursuing her vision of a life with meaning and purpose. The need to share each farmer’s story—in words as well as photos–was strong, and in 2016 I launched Grounded Women as a blog.

Life makes sense to me when I am on a farm; I feel centered and healthy. But farming isn’t a choice many of us want or can make. I share these stories of real women growing real food to inspire us all to create ourown authentic life, to have ourown healthy relationship to the earth and food, and to do our part—as each of us can—to heal our planet and ourselves.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

It’s the lost processes of photography – old film, large format view cameras – that enticed Photographer Kent Miller to start this current and ongoing project. He returned to his roots and found new inspiration in the old ways of working. His commercial work began over 25 years ago before the digital rage, so shooting film again feels like returning to an old friend. Using black and white film, some dating to the early 1900’s, has caused him to adjust how he shoots, to slow down the way he makes images. This project involves finding old film, then producing images of friends, artists, creators, and everyday people who move in and out of his life. After exposing the film, he develops and scans it. When the series is completed, his plan is to print each image by hand, the old school way, in a darkroom.

Jamie McCarthy photographed in Westchester, NY for creators project. Photograph was made using a Linhof 5×7 large format camera with Ilford FP4. Developed in D76 for 8.5 min. ISO-3, F6.8 @ 1 second

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

As I move throughout this world of ours, I wonder at times..how would I have seen and lived in this world if I hadn’t gone through limb lengthening as a child?. Where “Dawson,” gave the viewer a glimpse into what it’s like to go through limb lengthening for Dawson. ”What Difference a Foot Makes,” answers that question for myself and to give a viewer two different perceptions of the same world. One through my eyes at being a 5’2 person and how I would have seen the same world at 4”3.

I was born with achondroplasia, which is the most common of the 200 plus types of dwarfisms. Most people who have the condition average around an adult height of four feet, my predicted height was going to be 4”3 without any additional operations.

At ten years old, I made the decision to go through my first limb lengthening operation. Over the next five years I would go through a total of three operations on my upper and lower legs to gain 12 inches and one operation to gain four inches on my arms.

The operation started in Russia in the 1950s by Doctor Vetlana Ilizarov.

It’s an operation where pins are inserted into the leg or arm and a fixture is placed around the extremity and the bone is broken. Over the next three to four mouths months screws are turned to spread the bone apart and the patient gains an average of four to six inches. Many patients have multiple operations to gain addition height.

”What Difference a Foot Makes,” is a story told with 21st century technology and through social media. All the images are shot using an iPhone, as many of the scenes are part of everyday life and situations that I come across. I will take a photo of a scene at my current eye level and then one at where my eyes would had been without limb lengthening. The images are then layered in an app called “Collage King,” creating a diptych with my current height photo on top and the 4’3 eye level photo on the bottom. Video diptychs have been created as well to show the view what it’s like to navigate through places such as Time Square. The diptych is then uploaded to the “@whatdiffernceafootmakes” instagram account and shared with the world.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

I began photographing tornadoes and storms out in the heartland of America several years ago. As springtime approaches, I become restless with the need to get out into the prairie, the flat grasslands and the empty, eerie landscapes of the states that form tornado alley: Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Montana, Texas and Colorado and New Mexico. I like to look at clouds, I love to photograph them—this is where I can be a kid forever. I’m reminded of the Minor White quote, “A photographer is someone who has his head in the clouds and his feet on the ground.”

The photography of storms and weather phenomena is, for me, an exploration of the ephemeral, the constantly changing shapes and movement of the atmosphere. My photographs are meant to capture the dichotomy between the fury of skies torn apart and the tranquil, lonely solitude of the Great Plains.

My notebooks from chasing storms reflect the Buddhist-like state of meditation and peace I get from being out on the open prairie, simply looking at the sky:

The sky unfolds in sheets of light, shedding its skin, changing texture like a torn sheet folding in upon itself. Undulating in luminous bands, the ghosts of the wind fade into each other, their shapes changing again and again into other forms. A thin line runs along the prairie’s edge, defining the space between the sky above the land below—a boundary without a boundary, a place called infinity.

I go out to the Great Plains for the contrast and contradiction between the quiet, peaceful loneliness and that ominous foretelling of Armageddon when the sky turns dark and a howling wind erupts in blinding clouds of dust.Darkness comes, and with it the eerie green light of hail. The sky goes black, pulsing with flashes of turquoise, crimson and amber. You hear hail cutting through the trees, and watch it rushing towards you on the dashboard radar. Perhaps a twister will drop its thin spindle from the clouds tonight and race across the prairie’s ruler edge. In slow motion a supercell forms, pulling hundreds of acres of red clay topsoil more than ten miles up into a roiling sky. In the fading light, I photograph clouds lit by the glow of lightning, and then the night sky filled with stars. Scenes from a wild prairie night burn into my mind forever as the darkness is punctuated by staccato blasts of lightning.

I am working on a book of my photographs with the tentative tittle Fierce Beauty: Storms on the Great Plains, and publishing it in 2020.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

As a creative, email mailers are a widely used promotional tool to share work and reach a wider digital audience. Sam began sending a quarterly newsletter like this in early 2013, sharing new projects and things he had been up to as a photographer/director. It became a bit of fun in the studio when the Out Of Office replies started to come back and, mixed in amongst the more standard replies, were a few amusing messages.

The autoreply email is typically skimmed over and probably not read past the initial subject line but what Sam discovered is that some people had taken this automatic process to turn it into something personal. So he collaborated with illustrator Charlie Phillips to create bespoke prints of the emails overlaid upon his photography. He then sent the physical print back to the unsuspecting sender creating a fun contrast to the digital thing it had triggered from.

The response over the years has been amazing, with people sharing their prints across social media as well as people actually taking time to do something different with their auto replies themselves from seeing the project.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

I started ‘At Work’ after 15 years as a commercial photographer. After all that time I remembered that I became a photographer not for money, fame, or travel, but to get out of my own life and start telling stories of others through portrait. Before ‘At Work’ I used to walk in with an armada, both in terms of crew and over thinking the scene, but the story was right in front of me, and the magic was two feet in front of me. I realized my job is to kind of sit back, see it, and then capture it. Now, I walk into the space where my subjects do their work and I let them talk first. And I find when I do that and I listen, and I don’t interrupt, there’s a trust that comes.

We spend more time working than anything else, so what people choose to do with that time is precious. I went to the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles to photograph their Taxidermist not knowing he was going to walk us to the area of the exhibit with the family of three elephants. I have a family of three elephants tattooed on my arm, to represent my wife, daughter, and I. I’ve had that tattoo for several years. I got it because I heard elephants follow the same path for generations and my wish for my family is that we stay together through all that time. I had no idea that I was going to take that picture that day but these moments are gifts that is what ‘At Work’ all about.

It’s a conversation, it’s people sharing their inner thoughts about why they do what they do. There’s something to be said about open conversation and the ability to just talk and share what’s going on inside their mind. It just was kind of this snowball effect, one thing leads to another leads to another.

I try to empower the person to own their space. And then the challenge at times can be how I then have to capture the image, because sometimes it’s easier to pose everything but that’s not necessarily how they would really sit on their desk or on in their chair, so I ask them to turn it to what would really suit them best.

Sometimes it’s a space that blurs the lines between life and work like Muffy Kroha’s eclectic and bright home, and sometimes it’s much more at the edge. I’ve been from Antarctica to the North Pole to Madagascar. Then, in Havana, Cuba, it was hotter than you can imagine in a tiny room, it was just extreme conditions but what I found there was so beautiful. All these street performers were getting ready and there was this magic kind of family sense that they had with each other where they were helping each other. It was just an incredible, quiet scene. Just seeing people who love what they do on that scale took me out of that very sweaty, hot situation and just made me really excited.

What I’m learning more and more in my journey within this world is that perfection is unobtainable because in every moment we’ll see things differently. We’ll see a moment that should have been, could have been, but what’s important is the actual moment that happens. To really create ‘authentic, organic imagery’ is to allow it not be perfect. I want to create relatable images, not aspirational.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

“Every fall David starts growing a beard, keeps it through the winter, and shaves it once the air starts hinting of warmth in the spring. He’s been doing this as long as Christina can remember. The beard portrait series started in the spring of 2012, after Christina and our friends launched a full-fledged campaign to convince David to grow his beard for an entire year without trimming it, just to see how big it would get. A year-beard, or a “yeard” if you will. David made it through the winter, but finally gave up in March—much to everyone’s disappointment. And so just like every other year, it was time for the overgrown whiskers to go. We felt the need to document the 5-month-old face foliage, and used the opportunity to get creative with a portrait. We’ve kept it up every year since; a portrait of an annual beard and its inevitable demise. (Also, sometimes gif-making. Because, who doesn’t like mini animations?) We’ve really enjoyed this little project as it gives us a chance to just have fun and work out lighting techniques at the same time. It’s also a creative challenge as we have to push ourselves to do something different with a subject that remains the same year after year.”

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

July 2, 1937. On the final leg of their attempt to circumnavigate the globe at its equator, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan disappeared in the Central Pacific. Amelia’s last words received by the waiting U.S Navy ship, The Itasca were:

“KHAQQ to ITASCA. We are on the line 157-337. Will repeat message. We will repeat this on 6210 kilocycles. We are running on line, listening on 6210 kilocycles.” “We must be on you but cannot see you, but gas is running low”

A massive two-week search by ships and planes of the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy failed to find any trace of the missing aviators, or their Lockheed Electra aircraft. At the end of the failed search the official verdict was that the plane had run out of gas, landed in the ocean, and sunk without a trace.

Three years later, a work party discovered a human skull on the remote southeastern end of Gardner Island (now named Nikumaroro). Further investigation revealed a partial human skeleton, the remains of a fire and additional items including a wooden sextant box, part of a man’s shoe and part of a woman’s shoe. This last item led to speculation that the bones might be the last remains of Amelia Earhart. British authorities dismissed the idea and elected not to notify the American consulate. The bones and artifacts were subsequently lost and the entire incident was largely forgotten, discredited as rumor.

In 1997 and 1998, TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) researchers discovered the original British files relating to the incident, including the doctor’s report and the measurements upon which he based his assessment that the bones were those of a male. Contemporary computer analysis, however, revealed the skeleton was probably that of a female of northern European ancestry who stood roughly 5 feet 8 inches tall. That’s a good description of the only woman known to have gone missing in the Central Pacific in the 1930s – Amelia Earhart. Fortified by this and subsequent revelations, TIGHAR has mounted expeditions to the remote atoll in the hope of shedding light on this enduring mystery.

I was thrilled to be invited to join TIGHAR along with the search teams in 2012, on the University of Honolulu research ship K.O.K departing from Honolulu. We spent 30 days at sea with two different teams conducting the underwater search.

In 2015 we travelled back to Nikumaroro from Fiji for 30 days, to continue the underwater search in addition to a land search team and a scuba team.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

The Make Something series was born out of a time when I was writing a lot of estimates and being asked to justify each line item, which made me realize that very few people are privy to the process of what really goes into making a photo shoot. In a broader sense, so much of what we buy and use we have come to take for granted. Consumption is run on autopilot. We order things on Amazon, it shows up in two days or so, it breaks, and the cycle repeats. Or we go to a bar or restaurant, we eat, drink, leave, and it’s just a moment of our day. Many of us have come to settle for things that are just “good enough” because it’s easy and readily available, and more is just around the corner. I didn’t grow up with a lot of money and I was taught that if I were to buy something, I should seek out quality over quantity which feels harder these days as so much is mass produced in order to be sold at a discount and delivered quickly. It feels like few things these days are still made by hand, so I decided to make a tribute to those people who remain dedicated to the art of making things. It’s about people with a passion for the moving parts.

I chose Transmitter Brewery when I met Rob Kolb (a former Creative Director for theatrical advertising) through a mutual friend. Rob invited me to their brewhouse to document the making of one of their PH sours. He explained to me that they simply make beer that they like, and it was very clear to me that he and his partner Anthony Accardi (a former photo finishing studio owner) truly love what they do. Their brewing process manages to be both wholesome and intimidatingly scientific, and they show their unique personality by experimenting with unexpected flavors. In fact, these are award-winning small batches of beer which are so popular that it took me shooting this to actually get my hands on one! It’s the best reason yet I’ve had to drink on the job.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.

The Art of the Personal Project is a crucial element to let potential buyers see how you think creatively on your own. I am drawn to personal projects that have an interesting vision or that show something I have never seen before. In this new revised thread, I’ll include a link to each personal project with the artist statement so you can see more of the project. Please note: This thread is not affiliated with any company; I’m just featuring projects that I find. Please DO NOT send me your work. I do not take submissions.

The Oakland Beers baseball team was first introduced to me by a friend on the team. As soon as I heard their name I knew I needed to photograph them. I started going to their home and away games, practices, and hang out spots. Each time I went out I looked to capture something beyond the sports action. What intrigued me was the relational moments of the team and the one-of-a-kind creative details they each brought to the table. Without fail, every visit brought new visual surprises I could have never dreamed up. Capturing their story brought me back to a time before I entered commercial photography. A time free of pressures and expectations, a time with no one watching. It was just us, a field, and time to kill having fun.

After narrowing down the selects with consultant Peter Dennen I presented the project to freelance creative director Aaron James. He and I brainstormed the idea I had about a newsprint tabloid. He ran with it and thought of making it a program guide like the ones you might get at a game. The intention was to keep the project loose and gritty with a yesteryear feel to it. He also brought in illustrator Leo Zarosinski who blew us away with his Beers player characterization for our front cover.

APE contributor Suzanne Sease currently works as a consultant for photographers and illustrators around the world. She has been involved in the photography and illustration industry since the mid 80s. After establishing the art buying department at The Martin Agency, then working for Kaplan-Thaler, Capital One, Best Buy and numerous smaller agencies and companies, she decided to be a consultant in 1999. She has a new Twitter feed with helpful marketing information because she believes that marketing should be driven by brand and not by specialty. Follow her at @SuzanneSease.